Images

Order and Chaos in the Tarot Cards

Scientists today speak of the phenomena of life as existing “on the edge of chaos,” a sort of intermediate region between chaos and order. The perfect order is expressed by a solid crystal where everything is well-ordered and fixed. It has no potential for movement, and thus no place for life. Total chaos is expressed by smoke which has no stable shape. Here too there can be no life, because every structure would quickly dissipate. Biological and social life processes take place somewhere in between the crystal and the smoke. They are characterized by a certain degree of order and stability, but also by creative unpredictability and an occasional collapse of ordered structures.

We can see such a mixture of order and chaos all around us – in biological systems, in society, and in our personal life. To capture the complex interplay of chaos and order in life, the Tarot cards also have to express it in their design. In my view, the sophisticated balance between order and chaos is an essential feature of the Tarot de Marseille, and especially of the Conver deck.  Therefore, while many new Tarot decks (Both Marseille and English school) have tried to discipline the cards and to make them more orderly, when restoring the CBD Tarot de Marseille I tried to preserve as much as I could the original balance between order and chaos.

The main expression of order in the Tarot deck is the structure of the suits, and especially the fourfold regular pattern of the minor suits. Chaos, on the other hand, is mostly expressed in the card images, and especially in the irregularities and “gliches” of the Tarot de Marseille illustrations. Looking more closely, we can say that in the major suit the chaos element is more dominant, as it is expressed also in the card sequence and titles. On the other hand, the regular structure of the minor suits makes them more ordered and less chaotic. This is felt most strongly in the repetitive design of the number cards.

You can read more about order and chaos in the major suit in this section from my book Tarot – The Open Reading. Also, in this book section I discuss the idea of order and chaos in the court cards. As you can read there, the court cards present their own mixture: order in the table structure (four ranks by four suits), and chaos in the irregular images and titles.

Ace of Cups:
symmetric (order) on first impression,
asymmetric (chaos) on a closer look

The Blank Card

a Tarot deck is printed as a single page, which is later cut into separate cards. the full page contains 80 cards (8×10), which allows for the standard 78 cards plus 2. as most other printers do, i used one of the extra cards as a “logo card” with the deck name and description. the other one i decided to use as a “blank card” – an empty frame with nothing except the white background. i thought it would be interesting to release it without too many instructions, and see what people do with it. i also did my own experiments.

from feedbacks and by my own experience, the blank card can be used in two ways: either as a separate focusing tool, or as an additional card shuffled with the deck.

as a focusing tool, i keep the blank card separate from the deck. at the beginning of the reading session i put it right in front of the querent and ask him to focus his gaze at the center of the card. then i instruct him to say whatever comes to his mind without moving his gaze.

the results are very impressive. after a minute or two, people enter a mild trance-like state. they may start to see shapes and colors in the card. sometimes they see a specific card appearing in the frame in a skeletal way. once or twice people even experienced the card’s becoming transparent, so that they could see the surface under it.

when i feel that we had enough, i kind of “swipe” above the card surface with the palm of my hand to disconnect the querent from the effect. then i proceed with the reading as usual. but first, i ask him about his feelings. quite a few times, it happened that the querent has realized during the exercise that in fact, it is another question or issue which he really wants to raise in the session.

the second option is to shuffle the blank card into the deck and let it show up in the spread like any other one. here i follow an idea of a friend of mine. he tried this and realized that he could treat the blank card literally as a “carte blanche” – meaning, the universe is giving you an open card, anything is possible for you now. whatever you ask for, you will get.

i further thought that if this is so, i can let the querent choose another card to cover the blank one – not at random, but with a deliberate choice. what card would you like to see in this place? put it on the blank. this is a psychomagical act affirming your will and desire. now look at the card combination, and see how things will look like if you get what you want. consider what you see: is this realy your wish? maybe you would prefer something else?

i am sure there are more ways to use the blank card which can be interesting. you are welcome to try and explore them – and if you stumble upon something interesting, please tell me about it..

Mary K. Greer, one of the world’s leading authorities on Tarot, has just published a very favorable review of the CBD Tarot de Marseille cards, the new book “Tarot – the Open Reading”, and the CBD Tarot Android app.

as someone who always appreciated and admired Mary Greer’s contributions to the Tarot world (and profited from her well-known book “Tarot for Your Self”), i am very happy to get such a review from her.

thank you Mary!

read the review here: Reading the Marseille Tarot